It is well known that the food industry is subjected to guidelines and protocols of regulatory organizations such as the FDA in the United States and Health Canada in Canada, and certified food safety, processes such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). Similar protocols, to varying degrees, are in place around the globe, including Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.
These norms dictate that, amongst other things, food handling surfaces, containers and equipment must be sampled in order to detect the potential presence of hazardous pathogens. The food industry uses various versions of sponge products in order to perform surface swabs and sampling for pathogen detection.
There are versions of such sponges that are mounted on a handle in order to facilitate swabbing of hard-to-reach areas, such as the insides of food processing machinery, work area nooks and crannies, animal carcasses, etc., which would be more difficult to reach if one was using a simple handheld sponge.
A few versions of mounted sampling sponges exist on the market today and each has its drawbacks in terms of practicality and user friendliness.
Generally, a 1.5 in. by 3 in. sponge, usually pre-moistened with a neutralizing solution, is mounted, for instance by adherence, to a plastic handle. This device comes in a sterile sampling bag and is also available with sterile gloves. The user, wearing gloves, opens the sterile sampling bag and extracts the handle with its mounted sponge. The sponge is then used to swab a predetermined area of the surface to be tested. Once swabbing is completed, the sponge (which in fact has collected the specimen of surface contaminants) is removed from the handle, put back into the sterile sampling bag, which is closed and then forwarded to a lab, for incubation and analysis.
One known product consists of a simple and relatively flexible polyethylene handle. The moistened sponge is heat welded to and adheres to the top of the handle in a permanent fashion.
Once the user has swabbed the test surface, he then snaps the plastic handle and inserts the sponge, still adhered to the broken piece of handle, into the sterile sampling bag, to then be transported to a lab for analysis. This action requires the use of both hands, making it awkward. A third hand would be required to keep the receiving sample bag open and stable.
Furthermore, the piece of rigid plastic in the sampling bag is awkward for handling in the lab, increases the risk of a punctured bag and is generally cumbersome.
Another product has a sponge-holding handle assembly that includes two specific components: 1) an elongated handle, which is made of slightly flexible mix of HDPE and LDPE (High Density and Low Density polyethylene) and which has end prongs that the sponge is folded onto; and 2) a second rigid component that slides up and down along the elongated handle, and when the second rigid component is in its upper or distal position, it retains the sponge in place oat the end of the elongated handle, whereas, when the second rigid component is pulled to its lower or proximal position, it allows the sponge to be released from the elongated handle.
This version is cumbersome in that two free hands are also requires to operate the release of the sponge. Furthermore, this version is quite large, requires two separated molded plastic parts and is thus significantly expensive to manufacture, and thus possibly cost prohibitive.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved sampling sponge of the type releasably mounted on a handle.